A former Internal Revenue Service IT engineer pleaded guilty to accepting bribes in exchange for helping people he knew and their businesses win and keep contract work with the tax agency. Satbir Thukral now faces 15 years in prison.
The case is a good study of how bribery may occur with an entity’s subcontractors in highly technical work, such as IT, construction, and medicine in which there is limited oversight. In this instance, Thukral was a computer engineer overseeing the work of several contractors. He received bribes from a subcontractor to continue to allow two underqualified employees to work and threatened “economic consequences” to another subcontractor if they didn’t continue his payments. In the first instance, the firm continued to pay bribes thinking that the engineer would favor them in the competition for an upcoming $200 million solicitation.
Thukral was caught because became greedier with his demands, and the firms escalated the matters to law enforcement. He got away with the bribes because there was limited oversight of his management of the contractors.
This may also be the case on projects overseas. Who on the project can evaluate the multiple day-to-day requests for added software, hardware, or repairs from the IT manager that are under the formal competition threshold? Is there a second set of eyes on the construction engineer reviewing the work in remote conflict areas? Bribery is challenging to investigate until the demands outstrip the perceived benefits.
Appropriately qualified oversight and spot checks can mitigate this risk. It also helps to have clear language on the opening page of a solicitation stating that the entity does not tolerate bribery, kickbacks, or facilitation payments in the award or oversight of the contract and provide contact details if anyone solicits such payments.
Read more details on the case here.
